Posts Tagged ‘Slave Surnames’

Slaves were usually known by their first names, especially on small farms with few slaves.Plantation owners rarely recorded their slaves with surnames unless they had several individuals with the same first names.For that reason the use of surnames by slaves was far more common on large plantations where more people were likely to have the same given names.

Due to Wessyngton Plantation having such a large enslaved population many African Americans are listed with their previous owners’ surnames as early as the 1820s.

Slave bills of sale and other documents in the Washington Family Papers collection details the origins of many of these African American families.

The list above documents the names African Americans on Wessyngton Plantation who used surnames prior to emancipation and the date of their arrival on the plantation.

Plantation owners used records such as slave bills of sales, birth registers, and many other documents to keep an accurate count of their slaves’ births, deaths, and their production on plantations and farms.These documents are invaluable in tracing African American genealogy.

The document above is a list of enslaved African American men and boys on Wessyngton Plantation in 1856 owned by George A. Washington.Slave owners had to pay taxes on their slaves from age twelve to fifty, so the list only identifies those in that age range who were a part of the plantation labor force.Many of the individuals are listed with surnames: Davis, Fairfield, Gardner, Holman, Lewis, Price, Smith, Terry, Vanhook, White and Woodard.The use of these surnames made it possible to locate them and their previous slave owners.Many of them were also found on the 1870 U. S. Census living on or near Wessyngton Plantation.

In 1964, the Washington family deposited all their family papers and plantation records in the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville.Hundreds of these documents shed light on the lives of hundreds of African Americans enslaved there.

In 1860 Wessyngton Plantation was the largest tobacco plantation in the United States. The Washington family also held the largest number of enslaved African Americans (274) in the state of Tennessee. 187 of them were held on what was called the “Home Place” near the Wessyngton mansion. Eighty-seven others were held on a part of the plantation known was the “Dortch Place.”